The Informants
by Threesmallcrows
Summary: Izaya X OC. Even Ikebukuro isn't a city big enough for two informants. The stakes are the city and its humans, the game is love. May the best man- or woman- win.
1. In Case of a Sudden Loss of Innocence

**In the event of a sudden loss of innocence a blindfold will automatically extend from the ceiling. Pull firmly towards you in order to cover your eyes, and pretend like nothing's fucking wrong. Help yourself before helping others—you'll need it. **

Afterwards, they lie still in the dark room, exhaustion making it a necessity for the moment. Sprawled on the tiny bed, their backs ignore each other. She smokes, filling the room with a fuggy white haze, looking at nothing. He stares at the ceiling and slides his fingers up and down the sharp blade that he keeps close even when his clothes are scattered somewhere in the shadows of her apartment. Outside, the world rolls over, scratches its armpit, and begins a new day. Inside everything is still and old.

She turns to him, eventually, after her cigarette burns out. The bedsheets moan under her body as she shifts on them. Her whisper places itself like a reluctant scratch in his ear.

"I knew with that pretty face of yours you couldn't possibly still be a virgin…"

He's mildly amused by this, and flicks his black eyes towards hers for a second. Her eyes are noisy sighs in the semi-darkness.

"What makes you think I'm not?"

She contemplates, staring at the side of his head as if it'll disclose an answer.

"You don't fuck like a virgin."

He smiles, grinding his teeth on the dark like a bone-colored knife, and turns his face away from her, back to his study of her stained ceiling.

"I wasn't."

She lights another cigarette, the flick of the lighter a vicious shot in to the stomach of silence, and the white smoke is peace, bleeding.

"Good. I wasn't either."

The sun rises outside, but even its bright fingers flinch away from this nest of darkness, and so the room remains shadowy long after the rest of the world is bathing in light. Church bells toll, dully clanging cries to mark the funeral procession of another piece of childhood, diving out the window and vanishing into the light. The smell of sin is unbearable, but the children of darkness don't mind. They were born with it on their skin, and so have grown accustomed.


	2. Somewhere A Clock Is Ticking

**Another soldier, says he's not afraid to die**

**Well, I am scared… I'm so scared**

**In slow motion the blast is beautiful**

He's defensive for once, body leaning forward, one hand up in front with his own knife and one hand in back. He's doing what people normally do when they see _him. _It's definitely a strange feeling, kind of like what he's heard described as an out-of-body experience.

"I've got this feeling that there's something that I missed," Kikou half-sings, like a canary stuck in the dark mine of the bar, the smoke trailing from her lips a damaged lace scarf hanging from barbed wire. Izaya has to admire her consistency. Even now, she smokes.

From across overturned tables and abandoned bottles and hurried footsteps scattered like ash, they regard each other with steel eyes.

"That's a song."

"Aren't you clever."

He leans in a little, and the smell punches him in the nose.

"You're very drunk, you know that?"

He says it flatly. Truth is flat, like soda left out.

"Mmmm. You're pretty but not so smart," Kikou slurs. The knife edges forwards a little.

Izaya wants to laugh. This. Is really. Pathetic. The smell of danger chokes the room. He does not cough. He inhales it. She was always so in control, but he could smell it slipping, and here they are. The interesting part is, as always, the why.

"Come on. It's only four, you know."

"It is?" She shades her face with her hands, peers to the left.

Izaya's eyebrow raises. "There's no window there."

There's no sun either.

"Oh." She sounds disappointed.

"It's too early. To get this drunk." _Even for you_, he adds silently.

"But _you_"—Kikou lunges forward with the knife, he parries, they stare into each other's eyes for a second before he brings it up and slides it past hers in a ring of metal, slices down hard while she stumbles forward past him because of her own momentum and opens up her arm from wrist to elbow in one beautiful stroke.

She wobbles and turns back around, bleeding like a maniac. She doesn't touch her arm, doesn't acknowledge the wound like a mouth on her skin.

— "Now, you, you don't really give a fuck, do you?"

"Maybe I do."

He's not talking about concern here. He's talking amusement. Getting drunk at four, scaring the barkeep out with her cussing, slurring and stumbling all over the place—this girl is a wreck. One human. Just add water. All he has to do is sit back and enjoy. Or stand. With a knife, as the situation seems to dictate.

"No, you _don't._"

"I'm here."

"Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe you're not _real_."

Izaya doesn't respond to this, just lets her words unravel around her.

"But _me_. I know _I'm _real. And if _you're _real, then you're _Izaya_, which means you don't give a fuck."

He laughs a hard laugh, feeling impatient now, because this is getting a little boring. "Are you angry at me or something?"

"Nooo. I'm just saying, is all."

Abruptly, she sits down on one of the bar stools, swiveling around in it in numbing sketches of circles. Izaya is vaguely reminded of himself.

"Have some cake."

She gestures at the enormous heaps of bags next to her, and Izaya can see cake inside all of them, of all types, all sizes, all flavors.

"Oh, cake. How nice of you"—

"Have some," she says, low.

And she is shaking, her hands trembling like an addict's after a hit, and never has he seen her eyes so dry—like a stone that's been in the desert for half a million years.

There is a deeper problem here, isn't it? It's not an elephant in the room. It's a fucking mammoth. It _is _the room, the smell and the drunkenness and the vomit and all of that.

Izaya leans over, extracts a piece delicately, and takes a bite. He even makes it look as if it was a good idea. The sweetness melts down his throat. The name-calling doesn't particularly matter to him, though if she keeps going this way he's going to knock her out, strip her naked, drag her to a church spire, and hang her from the bell tower upside down from her ankles before stealing her credit card and spending it all on _cake_.

But we haven't quite reached critical mass yet.

Good for her.

There is awkward silence. She stares into the distance, fiddling with her knife as her arm bleeds in to the table. The attitude is already gone. She looks almost uncomfortable.

"It's pretty good." He manages to make it sound cheery.

"Mhm."

"So what's the occasion?"

She laughs and it is so bitter that Izaya thinks the air gets darker, like someone spilled medicine on it.

"Occasion? Who needs a fucking occasion for cake?"

She grabs a bottle from the table.

"Drink with me."

"No, thanks."

"Drink"—

"I'd rather n"—

"With me. You should. So we can celebrate."

What happened to no occasion? "Celebrate what?"

"A funeral."

He laughs again. "I think you're a little mixed up, there. Wasn't a funeral something to be sad at?"

When she stares into his eyes and says, "Not this one," he knows she's talking about herself.

After she passes out, he opens her wallet to pay the bartender. He gets sidetracked by the I.D.s. There are so many. They spill like candy through his fingers. A little number waves at him, catching his eye. He stops flipping. This one says she's eighteen today. How weird. He takes a second look.

A little obvious-and-revelation alloy hits him in the head. He distracts himself from the sweet, sweet fact by taking a moment to chastise himself for missing something so obvious. Come on, Izaya, he thinks. You researched this girl when she first started stealing your business. You _knew _her basic information. How could you have let this date slip past you? This date—this date—this—this—

-And he can't stop himself any longer, it's coming—

The maniacal laughter starts. It bubbles from deep, deep inside his chest before forcing its way up his throat and crawling out of his mouth like a worm wriggling from a bird's stomach. His smile reaches around and shakes hands with itself across his head. Outside, innocents hear his laughter and shrink away, like they do before their Gods. There is something about this man's laughter. It's not just the insanity in it, it's the utter blackness of it, so devoid of light that it hurts your ears to hear. Children might be able to understand it, but adults… adults cry when they hear Izaya's joy. The bartender takes one looks inside and bails when he hears Izaya shouting, "I _LOVE _HUMANS!" at the top of his lungs. The girl's head is limp on the bar.

Oh, he thought it was bad before—but this is just great.

When Izaya finally catches his breath, he wheezes at the drunken girl, "Why didn't. Why—didn't you tell me—tell me it was your _birthday_?"

This is excellence.

**Author's Note: **All song lyrics (first line, title of chapter, first line OC says) are all from Snow Patrol's Somewhere a Clock is Ticking.


	3. The Most Terrible Truth of All

**Our story takes place in a wet and painful alleyway, where two children are about to discover something grand, something unexpected, something mostly terrifying…**

**Ikebukuro Pictures proudly presents: The Most Terrible Truth of All**

It is pouring, the sky opening up and dumping water on both of them. A blurry, thick blanket of mashed grey and blue splotches squats over them. They sit in the alleyway, silent, the pain pressing fingers against their mouths and drowning their screams.

The word fuck is making its way on repeat through her mind, over and over and over until she wants to crawl out of her own brain. Somehow, it links itself with the word "fear."

Izaya sways against her, wet shoulder sticking to wet shoulder. She hits him in the face, hard, and his eyes reopen reluctantly. "Stay awake, Izaya. Can you hear me? You stay awake. They're coming."

I can hear your fear, he wants to say. You're such a human, he wants to say. But he can't. He settles for acting childish.

"Mmm. You're being mean, Kikou-chaaaan."

"Shut up."

He slides away from her, leaning on the wall. His voice has been worn down to a whisper.

"What am I doing?"

Shit. She looks at him, and he's looking somewhere beyond the floor, smiling vaguely. Always call the ambulance when people start acting suicidal, they say. She doesn't know why, but she does know this is the closest she's ever seen Izaya to giving up—on what, exactly? Not life. Just something. His attitude is gone, fallen when the bullets cracked him open.

"I don't know. You're a crazy fuck," she answers frantically, trying to keep him up, pushing his shoulder up with her thin one, terribly aware of how small she is even comparison to him. "You do whatever the hell you want to do."

He looks up at her, eyes like an old man's. "Do you think I want this?" His hand clenches spontaneously on his bloodied shirt, clutching his side, riding out just another wave of numb pain. "You and Shizuo"—

"No." She is so afraid of saying something wrong right now. "Don't talk about it"—

"You did." He coughs and it is bloody. "You wanted to _manipulate _me"—

"But it didn't work, Izaya. Nothing works on you." Did it? She's frantic now.

Izaya stares at her, eyes devoid of expression. "Tell me"—

"Izaya, stop"—

"_Shut up. _Did you love him?"

Silence. She's never heard such anger in his voice before.

"No."

Izaya's eyes close, slowly. "I knew it."

"Izaya, _listen_ to me"—

"I knew you didn't love him, you were doing it because of me. You wanted to make me _jealous_."

"But you're not."

"No, of course I'm not." Suddenly Izaya feels like he's on fire, his skin burning to pieces as his mind falls apart. The lie could be the only thing that keeps him from dying.

"You are a foolish little girl meddling in things beyond your scope. Pathetic girl looking for love. To think that _you _could outsmart _me_." He grabs the words out of air, hurling them in her face. They burn even through the rain. "You're desperate, you know that? You're sad and average. A rich, spoiled daughter of business people, trying to live life in the big city, trying to be something you're _not_. Depressed about your own existence. You may be clever—I'll give you that, you're smart—but in the end you're just another girl seeking acceptance. You would come _begging _to me"—

She wants to hit him. Why does he have to make her feel so naked all the time?

"And what about you?" She's fed up with this, now. "Dancing on the lives of others, playing God—you're not a God, you know that? You're just another fucking dirty human, like the rest of us. Don't act like you're better. And Shizuo—at least Shizuo is honest, he knows what he wants, does what he wants. You're just another pretender. Don't say you weren't jealous, I saw the way you looked at him, the way you looked at us—that wasn't a lie. Your two possessions, huh, me and Shizuo? You don't own us. You can't own us. I'll kiss him whenever I want"—

"And that is true, Kikou, you could kiss him whenever you want. There's just one small problem with that"—

"What, don't say you won't allow it, I don't care if you don't"—

"You could kiss him"—

"That's _exactly _right"—

"But it's not him you love."

A deadly silence. Glazed black eyes meet murky brown ones.

"It's not. Him you love." The words repeat themselves automatically, doubling back on his tongue in amazement.

She wants to cry and laugh. Her heart hurts like it's about to explode.

"It's not."

And that is the most terrible truth of all.

For the first time, they kiss, lips meeting lips in the acknowledgement of the reality that has swallowed both of them whole. All she can taste on him is the metal that she put in his body, and the darkness of their being. He tastes the funeral procession of a relationship—musty smell of gravestones, clean ugliness of the corpses. This, they know, is the first, the only, the last time.

Because Izaya can never be in love.

Shinra is peering down the alley. Kikou tells him to, "Hurry, hurry"—

The world fades to black, as the rain applauds.

**Author's Note: **In case you can't tell already, this story is not written in order. So if you're confused about how this happened, don't worry! It'll all be explained… sooner… or _later…. _


	4. I Fired Two Warning Shots

**I Fired Two Warning Shots… **

…**(in to his **_**head**_**) **

Izaya pauses for the moment, incredulous. His ears cringe a little at the barrage of unwelcome syllables pushing their way in.

"What?"

He can almost feel the girl flinch on the other end of the phone. Too harsh, there, he reprimands himself. Back off a little. Izaya does not do incredulous.

"I said, um, like I already got it?" A chronic uptalker, this one. Amusing enough, but already he knows she's just typical—so easy to tell from the little piece of information she asked him to find, a simpleminded bauble for a teenage girl. The job would be easy enough, truly, if it weren't for the fact that her father was an active member of the Japanese mafia.

"Hello?"

Izaya shifts. "Yes, I'm here."

"So, anyways, yeah. Like, I'm fine now? Thanks for the help, though?"

"Hm." Izaya has to keep her on the line—someone else is working his territory? This is news, and the fact that it is is bad. He decides to be obvious about it, since this girl isn't _too _much of a threat. "Who was it you said you got this from? I like to keep track of my competition, you see…" His tone is honey-sweet, bordering on flirtatious, injected with the perfect dosage of needy and mixed a hint of pleading. Izaya flatters himself with the idea that he could probably build a successful business in either the chemical or perfuming fields someday if he needs it—which is unlikely.

The girl laughs. "She said you would say that."

Izaya bristles silently. He hates being predicted. He almost never is.

"She said not to tell…"

He knows a dead end when he sees one, and forces his tone light. "All right. Never mind, it was just an idea…" With a resounding click, his fingers hang the phone up.

But you already have told, he thinks, more than you know. It is a girl—woman, maybe. She already knows me. She's purposefully stealing business from me—probably a girl, after all, instinct tells him. She is cautious, but not cautious enough. Not a beginner, but no threat to me either.

No threat. Until over the next two weeks, six fish sweep through Izaya's fingers. Five are little ones, but one is something of a big catch. And Izaya is forced to admit that this is becoming a problem, greatly compounded by the fact that he _still _does not know the identity of this foreign fisherman—or fisher-woman, in this case. He doesn't like this feeling, this nervous animal scratching at his heart and his ribs. Shinjuku is _his_, and has been his for a long time. There's plenty of other cities to settle in. Why this one? Where is she? What is she playing at, anyways? Questions gather around his head and shoulders, spinning in little infuriating clouds around him in the night, lit faintly by streetlights and neon signs.

Whatever the answer to the questions, they are not going to solve themselves. She's not coming to him, anytime soon. Which leaves Izaya the single option of going after this girl himself.

Lying on the couch of his apartment, mind whirling at one in the morning, Izaya can hear his heart beat, loud and fast. He is excited. The thrill of a chase pounds through his veins. This might be fun, he thinks. The knowledge that at that exact moment someone important that he _doesn't know yet _is somewhere inside this city makes his lips curve up in a sweet, deadly smile.

The setting is Shinjuku, and in the future Ikebukuro. The players are the informants. The stakes are everything either one could dream of, and probably more. And it is all starting now.


	5. The Best Life Lessons

"**And you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free. (John 8:32)" **

**The Best Life Lessons **

Kikou remembers it with the cutting clarity of glass shards—her first real conversation, that is, and the start of the way she lives her life now.

It was with one of her father's whores.

Back then, they still lived in their sixtieth-floor Shanghai flat. There was no place for little girls in that modernist castle. It was too much polished glass, gleaming steel and art-deco paintings full of strange colors and geometric shapes. The furniture crouched around the polished floor with their sinister curves. Dust did not dare to exist in that space. Even the insistent city noise didn't manage to intrude there. The taxi honks of the ordinary people were muffled and seemed miles away, the fingers of noise peeling back, exhausted and defeated, from the slick surfaces of the skyscraper. She used to like leaning against the glass window-wall, imaging falling hundreds of feet to land on the pavement below—free as a bird, for a few seconds, at least.

That particular afternoon, she was bored. There was nothing to do. She walked in to her mother's room, that dim, shadowy realm of the adults. Sometimes jewelry was left out, which Kikou always liked looking at. They reminded her of her mother—brilliant and glittering and beautiful, colored like the feathers of parrots, but also hard, cold, and prone to cut careless fingers, snagging skin on gold peaks or diamonds.

The door to the room swung open soundlessly as Kikou pushed. The typical gloom of the space, along with the lingering smell of her mother's perfume, greeted her.

But.

There was someone already in the room.

This person was definitely not her mother.

She remembers the legs, first. Miles of curved, young flesh terminated in delicate porcelain feet, caught in the leather straps of gladiator sandals. Impossibly imposing, to a six-year old, at least. Next, the edge of a fringed black dress. Lean stomach, taut body, limbs muscled yet delicate, formed like a doll's. A perfectly oval face loomed somewhere near the ceiling, embedded with almond eyes and lashes like feathered fans, framed by sleek black strands of hair. She's pretty, but there's something about her eyes—they look old, somehow.

There's no way, she thinks. I can't tell this woman to leave. She's too—too tall, too pretty, too _something_. Here's someone who looks, somehow, like she knows what's happening. You can't fool those coffee-stain eyes.

"_Ni shi shui?_" she asks calmly in perfect Mandarin, and then in slightly-accented English, "Who are you?"

She understands both but answers the latter. "I'm Kikou. And you're not Mom."

The woman grins, a pointed tongue unraveling around her thin lips.

"No, I'm not."

"This is my Mom's room—ma'am."

She breaks out in laughter, a hoarse, coughing kind of slow choking. It goes on for a long time. Kikou has no idea what she thinks is so funny. It's awkward. Finally, it grinds to a halt. "No one," she says, "has called me 'ma'am' in a long, long time. You're a funny kind of girl. Are you that man's daughter?"

There is no doubt in Kikou's mind that she's talking about Dad. _Everyone _knows Dad.

"You mean Dad? How do you know him?"

"Know him?" There is a particular taste of anger in her voice now. "I guess you could say _he _knows _me_, for a few hours, at least. Right _now—_ha! Ha!—right now I don't exist for him anymore."

Kikou is mildly put off but too intrigued to retreat. "Well…That's nice, I guess."

The woman squints down her nose at Kikou. Squatting down, she frames Kikou's face with her hands. She smells like black roses and lace insects and liquid smoke. Kikou likes her already. Her raspy, low voice is so different than Mom's honey-glossed tones, her scent a world away from Mom's sugary florals.

"Your Daddy," she says with great seriousness, "is a bad man. You stay away from him, okay?"

"But—he's not a bad person! Dad's not… and that doesn't make sense, he's Dad, it's not like I can just avoid him."

The woman's eyes shift suddenly, and they are empty and infinite, and Kikou gasps and tries to pull away. Symmetrical nails are digging in to her shoulder.

"Let go—please—you're hurting me"—

"Now you listen to me, little girl. Do you love your Daddy?"

What kind of a question is that? Everyone knows kids are supposed to love their parents. "Yeees," she says, giving the woman as strange a look as she dares. "Of course I love him."

She shakes her head vehemently. "He doesn't deserve it. And the reason why is 'cause he treats even his whores like shit. Lemme tell you"—that grating laugh, again—"that you can really tell a man by how he treats his whores, and I can say your Daddy is an honest-to-God genuine piece of shit."

"Um," squeaks Kikou as the nails dig into her flesh, "Uhh, um… a wh-whore, really?"

The woman mistakes her floundering for a different type of confusion.

"Long explanation. It's where a woman like me will go around to men like your father and do bad things while your Mummy's not looking. Now you mind me, little girl. You might not understand any of this right now, but basically your Daddy spends all sort of other people's money on things he shouldn't, and doesn't pay them back, and—oh, Goddamnit, it's too hard to explain—other things like that. Bad stuff."

Kikou nods helplessly. In flashes, her mind pulls at her hand—the men in suits, always the men in suits, coming around, talking in different hushed languages—Japanese, Chinese, English, Russian, Spanish, her head spins with the sounds of a country's backroom deals. She'd never bothered to listen.

But now.

These woman's words are making her wonder.

"He doesn't love your Mum the way he should - and she doesn't do him right either. They've done terrible things. Now, you might think otherwise, because other people tell you your Mummy and Daddy are great, wonderful, smart people—you hear that a lot, don't you? Don't answer, I can tell you do. But you'd better think _veeery _carefully before you listen to them. Right now you're probably confused, but in a few years when you're a grown-up girl, you can decide for yourself exactly what sort of people they are."

"Um. Ma'am. I don't think I understand quite what you mean, yet."

She laughs again. "That's okay. That's just fine, little girl. Just remember what I said. Always keep your eyes open and remember that everyone lies." She gives Kikou a little shake and a look that means she had better answer right now.

"Yes! Okay. I get it."

Again, she crinkles her nose at Kikou. "Hm. I believe you do. Trust me, as long as you know the differences between truth and lie, you'll be all right."

She stands up, smoothes out her skirt.

"Wait. Are you leaving already?"

"I'm a busy woman. I have places to go, and more important people to talk to."

"Oh." Kikou doesn't want this woman to leave. She talks different than the rest of them—more _present_, more _there_—talks to her like she's an adult, and her words have opened up a maelstrom of ideas. Kikou feels a mask has been peeled from her eyes. "Then… are you ever coming back?"

The woman regards her sadly, and with a look that feels like distant pity. "No… no, I don't think I will. You take care and mind what I said, little girl."

By the time her tears are done, the woman has faded in to the elevator and away in a blurry smear. And when her mother comes back later and asks what happened to the strands of pearls, the ruby ring and the brooches, Kikou doesn't say a word—just shrugs and watches. Her eyes are open now.

And how she sees.


	6. Distractions

**Distractions—One thinks of procrastination, cats jumping across the road, the comforting hold of alcohol, a toddler pulling at a mother's sleeve, the blink of a Facebook ad, the arms of a lover… **

Some days almost manage to be peaceful. Those are the magical days, the unusual days, but perhaps not as truthful. Nevertheless, those are the ones she likes the most to look back on, for they are the easiest to remember.

(-)

The morning sunlight reaches lithe fingers in through the windows, waving away the darkness dismissively. Izaya groans as the thick, buttercup rays pierce his closed eyelids, painting fat brushstrokes of red across the backs of his closed eyelids. It's a crazy cocktail of sun and clean air, a hangover of light. He's determined not to enjoy it.

"Come on, sleepy. The day's already started." She continues ripping the curtains open, smiling when Izaya moans and buries his face in the deflated pillow. The light skims lightly along the curves of his white back, throwing the sharp juts of his shoulders and the thin road of his spine in to bright-edged relief. She watches him shift, her stomach warm from pressing against his chest, and her heart stirs.

"Noooo," he whines. "I don't wanna get up."

"Did anyone ever tell you you have the temperament of a five year old?"

"Is that a rhetorical question?"

She laughs. "How you ever made it as an informant is completely beyond me."

"It comes naturally. No early hours required."

"Naturally?" She opens the window, and the sound of diurnal creatures rushes in. He winces. "Sorry to break it to you, natural talent, but the rest of us actually have to work a little at this."

"You're terrible." He cracks open an eyelid and lets the red numbers of the clock horrify him. "I _really _don't think waking up at six seventeen is going to help anything…"

"The world," she informs him crisply, "will not wait for anyone, not even you."

He lets the "even" stoke his ego a little. "What time did I go to sleep last night, anyways?"

"Not sure. Not too late. Somewhere around one, maybe?"

"Ugh. That's baaarely five hours. And that's not even counting the distractions."

She quirks an eyebrow, a smile curving her small lips. It's unlike Izaya, yet also like him, to be so indirect. "That's what you'd call it? Distractions?"

"Mmmm." He rolls over, cocooning himself in her thin blankets, and supplies lazily, "Definition of the word distraction: an entertainment that provokes pleased interest and distracts you from worries and vexations."

"So your mind is working, then."

"My mind is always working."

"Even when you're asleep, huh."

"Even when I'm asleep."

"Even while you're being distracted?"

"It could also mean something that causes mental turmoil."

"Oh, I'm _sorry_. Didn't mean to distress you."

He sits up at last, stretching like a cat, all elegance and clean, curved lines. "You are my distraction."

She lets the "my" slip, though the word grates on her mind. Instead, she watches him, and lets her mind fill with the knowledge of his beauty. It's one of the rare days where both the informants happen to be in a good temper.

He sees her eyes and arches his back perhaps a little more than necessary. "Pennies for your thoughts?"

Botched laughter fumbles from her mouth, and she turns away. "It'll cost more than that."

"I," he whispers, "can afford to pay."

"It's nothing."

His arms are somewhere around hers now, his mouth near her neck. "Nothing?"

She breathes out unevenly. "You are such a fucking tease."

Laughing, he lets go. Somewhere deep in their chests, both feel that this type of day is too bright for their dark velvet kisses.

The day is warm. They spend it carelessly at cafes, in parks, on city sidewalks, watching the stream of humanity waltz past them. For once, their cell phones are silent—never off, that would be too much—and their laptops sitting in the apartment. Izaya even plays casually with her fingers as they walk, white hand on white hand in the sun, small miracles.

They pick out lovers, friends, colleagues, and enemies by the tones of human voices and the silent tongue of body language, the old fashioned way. Reveling in the sharp observance of the other, each builds on the information given, writing surprisingly accurate stories from the smallest details: the pale imprint of a ring, a disheveled tie, the stench of alcohol stained breath, they all reveal hidden things, like tucked-away jewels in some dank cave. The probing foreignness of an accent opens worlds. A particular walk or a turn in a step spins stories from air. In their world, details and big pictures are, simultaneously, everything.

A few times, Izaya has to catch his breath and laugh at this intelligence of hers, her one redeeming quality—the challenge, how he always loves a challenge. They can feel through their hands the near-silent ticking of thought, the surprising and quick turning rhythm of it, like the heartbeat of the mind. Neither can defeat the other, though they seek to.

This is very much how both of them love to spend their time, spying on the city, laughing at its delirium and with its great emotions and for its triumphs and falls.

Later, they go to the church, since it's a Sunday, and Izaya listens as she systematically condemns the hypocrisy and weakness of mankind from the back pew, scorning priest and believers and faith in one mass of cynical hate. She spews grey smoke and critical words in equal measure. But her heart doesn't seem to be in it. Her voice lacks the usual caustic bite. The cuts are shallow this time, not deep, barely drawing blood—and with that she seems satisfied.

Izaya sees her glance up at the massive stained-glass window before she leaves. Her body is covered in multi-colored, glowing scales, her shadow cast in luminous red and rich cobalt blue. She turns once, knobby arms out and coated with a neon leaf fall, like a little girl in a snowglobe—with a cigarette in her mouth, trailing a scarf of smoke.

Casually, he asks, "Do you still believe that?"

She doesn't take her eyes from the window. "What's _that_?"

"You know. What you talked about the other day."

"Sin," she says slowly, "is not so easily forgiven." But her face is lit, and there is a small smile cracking her mask.

Evening draws over the day like a projection of rich blues and purples. They take the underground for hours, unwilling to go to sleep yet.

Druggies, C.E.O.s, travelers, window-cleaners, and poets pass them in dimly lit shapes. Lives blend in and out of the compartment like quiet-edged shapes, coming from places, heading places. Izaya begins stories, his voice a murmur in the noise of the train, and she spins endings in time. His heart throbs large with the love of humanity, the absolute love that swells like a spiderweb-bubble and hugs the planet tight. He presses his arm against Kikou's, enjoying the cool plastic of the seat and the constant rattle and screech that is the breathing of the train. The flickering light is a particular shade of warm yellow, like melted gold, and soft auburn shadows pool at the sides of it, gathering like children around the feet of the storytellers. There is, he thinks, a feeling of being absolutely in the moment that brings a kind of contentment with it. And a truth to that old cliché of heartbeats in the silence. He shakes his head a little at his own foolishness, for it is not quiet and he cannot hear her heartbeat or his own.

The train rattles to her stop. He motions to get off, but she pushes him awkwardly back with her elbow. Izaya forms the question in his eyes.

"Not," she says quietly, "tonight."

"Why?"

Hurriedly, she leans over him and presses a light kiss against his forehead, and says, "A day like this… it shouldn't have any distractions."

He understands.

"Go back to your family, Izaya. Go see your sisters." They're missing you.

She disappears from view in a cloud of smoke, like all the other shapes, moving from someplace to someplace. It's an order, really. Does Izaya ever take orders? But he doesn't move, just sits there, feeling the kiss lingering on him as the metro carries him far away in to the darkness. In the sky the moon is grinning down and scattering cool silver drops from its wide hands, spinning in the sky.

He goes to sleep that night alone—but not, because he can hear the breath of his sisters and feel rough fingerprints around his collarbone, and the feather imprints of lips on his mind. And so he sleeps an undistracted sleep, and there is a smile on his face that is almost innocent.

**Author's Note: **Like the only happy chappy in this fic. I had to listen to Owl City to get in the mood.


	7. The Blonde Monstrosity of Ikebukuro Ente

**The Blonde Monstrosity of Ikebukuro Enters**

Kikou realizes early on that trouble follows Izaya the way fleas do a dog. She doesn't see until later how accurate a description that is.

"I-za-ya-_kun_," grates a voice like shattered candy. "I thought I told you never to come back here."

Or rather, right before that:

She's trailing Izaya, Izaya babbling away about nothing while she doesn't listen. There is the slight, warning crunch of something being torn.

Izaya turns, slightly, words cut off midstream. "Did you say something?"

"No," she frowns. "But there"—

Before she can say anything else, a large chunk of something flies past her, close enough that she feels the wind slapping by beside it. It slams into Izaya like a cliff face, metal solidly smacking against flesh, the feel of the city's fist blooming on his face in painful flowers. Izaya is gone in a tumble, and for a moment she has the very illogical thought that some small spaceship has flown into him and carried him off, pinned to its front, an alien capture, and she almost giggles.

Then she sees him lying spread-eagled some twenty feet back on the pavement, the vending machine—vending machine?—also bowled over on its side slightly behind him.

She doesn't for a moment fear he's dead or even particularly injured. Izaya, God knows, is not that easy to get rid of. Instead, Kikou turns her eyes to the blonde monstrosity standing, storming, smoking up the other end of the street.

Blue tinted glasses are tucked into a neat bartender's outfit. A cigarette is ground mercilessly into the floor, the sound like a struck match flaring to fire.

"I-za-ya-_kun_," he grates.

"Oops," mutters Izaya from the street, slowly unstitching his cheek from the ground. Kikou can already see the bruise beginning to form. "Good morning, Shizu-chan."

"Don't call me that!"

Kikou winces. Does he have to yell so loudly?

"Kikou, meet Shizu-chan."

The man's eyes snap to her.

Why'd he have to go and drag _her _into this mess? She tries to hide beneath her shield sized sunglasses and the smoke from her cigarette. What a monster this man is.

"Kikou? Kikou? Who's this girl?" "Shizu-chan" glares at her, and she tries not to shrink. "One of your friends?"

"You might call it that," she says cautiously.

"Then she can't be any good either!" he roars, addressing Izaya and ignoring her. "Another useless flea, like you, I can smell it on both of you… when I catch you two I'm going to grind your carcasses into the"—

"Let's go," smiles Izaya, pulling her towards him. "Come on. Come _on_."

As they start sprinting, she gasps, "Where are we going?"

"Doesn't matter. It's all a game," replies Izaya, hauling her over a chain-link fence. She is infinitely less graceful than he.

"A game? You'd play it with that monster?"

"He's a monster all right," says Izaya," but he's also just an ordinary human, in some ways."

"He tore a- a fucking vending machine out of the ground! That's not ordinary!"

"That's Shizuo for you."

"Why'd you have to drag me into this, too?"

"I didn't drag you anywhere."

"He's—shit, he's right behind us, _Izaya_!" She can't help wailing the last part.

He _laughs _at her, the bastard, even as they're going full-force now, jumping steps into the subway station. "Don't be so afraid."

"He's going to kill us!"

"He's not going to kill us."

"Have you _tried _fighting him before? Does it look like you could take him on?"

"He can't kill us if he doesn't catch us, and there, I very much intend to win." He gives her a blade-sharp grin. "I always win, with Shizu-chan. Really, have some faith, Kikou…"

"Sure, sure," she mutters. "Tell that to the vending machine you got hit by."

"Save your breath."

Another few moments of panicked footsteps and blurred scenery fly by. She can't help glancing back at the blonde man pounding away behind them. The fury on his face tastes like metal in the air.

"I think he has a stop sign," says Kikou.

Izaya whistles and smiles and keeps running.

(-)

Later, they make it into a subway station a moment before Shizuo slams into it as well. It's the zoo in reverse, as they cage themselves in to protect themselves from the snarling beast outside.

"The _fuck_," she gasps, letting her breaths slow themselves down. "He's fucking insane." She glances up at Izaya, her hands on her knees, ribs on fire. It's annoying how unaffected he seems.

"You're not even sweating," she accuses him.

"I do this a lot, remember?"

"No, I don't. I knew people hated you. I didn't know you had a—a wolf, chasing you!"

"Shizu-chan is an old, old friend of mine. As I'm sure you've surmised, he doesn't enjoy it when I come back to pay him visits."

"Izaya, _no one _enjoys your visits."

"Aw. How harsh, Kikou."

"How'd you get to know him anyway?"

"I knew him in high school. Here, in Ikebukuro I mean."

"That's not so long ago. Only an year or two, right?"

"It seems a long time to me," says Izaya.

She waits for him to say something else, but he just lets the silence settle back around them.

In her mind lurks a blonde beast, and she shudders again.


	8. Messy Pulp That Warms Her Cold Hands

**Messy Pulp That Warms Her Cold Hands**

They're on a train, again, like in that day of sunshine and that night of purple projections. But this time the night isn't purple. It's not jewel-toned. It's a blood diamond.

Darkness seeps from beneath their skins, from out their lips. She coughs, thin ribs pushing against Izaya, smoke shuddering and stumbling out in shaky grey waves. He is pushing against her so hard that she's sliding up the wall of the compartment. This late at night, there's somehow still starers—but let them stare: they have more important things to worry about.

His hands are on her shoulders and her neck and her waist and his knife at her throat even as their mouths clash in hot disarray. Kikou's eyes are almost closed but not quite, because she _knows _what she's dealing with, and she watches him through her sparse eyelashes. Her stare bores into him hard and sharp, like arrows, and he winces. His eyes close as he buries his lips somewhere near the nape of her neck, his blood trickling slowly into the black cave of his shirt and hers against his hands like lipstick accusations. He pins her white hands above her head, fluttering like pale bruised crows, and shoves his mouth against hers, spreading her lips open forcibly with his teeth. She stabs the heel of her boot into his foot. They are glued together by pain and—

Need?

Fucking no. They hate each other. It's not even lust.

Really, do they need an explanation?

This is what they do.

"I fucking hate you, you _asshole_," she murmurs as his lips shred along her collarbone, and Izaya is smiling, smiling in to her not-so-fragile neck.

She's curled up on the seat now, her legs wrapping like ivory chains around the backs of Izaya's thighs, trapping him, dragging him closer. Izaya's pale neck is curled over the top of her head, slumped because he's exhausted already, the two of them breathing hard, gasping for air. Five minutes, and they're already wearing each other thin. He digs his nails in to her shoulders weakly and smiles when he feels her flinch, feels her calves tighten against the backs of his knees.

At some point, a young man—twenty five or thereabouts, his face scrubbed clean and glowing like a bland slice of pie in the dim lights of the train, mistakes—_mistakes?_—their love for the violence it is, and tries to help her. He backs off, hands up, when the girl violently pins Izaya's face against her protruding collarbone with her skinny elbows, panting, taking her knife away from Izaya long enough to wave it in his face. Izaya smirks into her collarbone.

"Back. The fuck. _Off_. Do you _understand _me?" My property, her heart screams, _mine. _

Then he's gone, and it's back to just the two of them—and the druggies and homeless and muggers and dropouts, of course, who don't even pretend to look away from this travesty of a relationship.

Darkness is still falling—it has an infinite potential, for that. Night gets blacker.

"So _protective_," and Izaya's voice is almost a purr now, his eyes shining dimly in the dark like a cat's—all glow and no light.

"Shut up."

"Mm-hmm. You _love _my voice."

"I _love _it. I do." Her voice is husky and low and tastes like liquid smoke, like lace butterflies—why, he wonders, does this sound familiar? "When you do this, that is"—and her teeth violate his mouth and bind his tongue, scarring it with affection. When he involuntarily yelps a little and pulls back, she doesn't let go, and he ends up hurting himself with his own movement.

"That's not nice, you know," he whispers in to her ear, biting on it as her smile destroys him.

"You're not nice. Except for when you're screaming, of course. Your scream is _sexy_"—

"I know I am. Sexy. Thank you."

She pushes the edge of the blade into his jacket, hard, irritated by his presumption. He jerks his hand accidentally-on-purpose, slicing her throat open a little in retaliation.

"Arrogant bastard," she hisses.

"Bitch."

"_My _bitch. You are." She giggles. It's surprisingly high-pitched, considering the huskiness, the dangerous lowness, of her normal voice.

"I'm not anyone's _anything_." He's angry for a second, really angry, ready to kill her.

"_Really_?" And she buries her un-glossed lips against his before he can say anything, moving the knife to his throat to remind him not to try anything. She strokes his sharp chin with her short nails, leaving angry red scratches on his pretty face, when he turns away from her.

"Look at who you want to _fuck_, asshole."

He arches his back in to hers, pushing his ribs against hers.

"Who said anything about"—

And it's like there's some kind of invisible signal.

Abruptly, she releases him, shoving him away hard, wiping her mouth with disgust, and their merged bodies separate like bloody lips. He gracefully reels backward, refusing to be taken by surprise. His face is bleeding from her nails. Her wrists are bleeding from his hands. He goes to sit near one end of the seat, her on the other, and it is silent in the compartment for five or so minutes.

He realizes with a little jolt that she's almost crying.

"You're a monster," she whispers. "Fucking monster."

The beasts we've become.

The last shard of innocence cries tears, and they make the wounds sting.

Slowly, slowly, the smile creeps back on his face. He licks his lips clean of her veins. It tastes like graveyard black and the infected white of the elephant carcass. He wants to tell her she tastes like trash and death, that he doesn't want this rotten chunk of her heart. But she is already gone into the night with a chunk of his, trailing smoke and crushing it into a messy pulp that warms her cold hands.

He thinks that it's too bad that it's always too late, with them.


	9. The Last Crayon

**The Last Crayon **

There is nothing left to say.

Kikou's bags are packed, the worn leather rough in her hand. She half-expects Izaya to show up at the train station, if only to gloat. He won, didn't he? In the end, she's the one moving out, after all. Always moving, always moving. She thought she'd found a home at last, but this is just another disappointment.

Sighing, Kikou moves forward, the empty click of her heels echoing against the floor of the train station. The clock hangs, a baleful eye, in the smoky evening air. Five minutes to go, it proclaims harshly. Five minutes left of wonderful Ikebukuro.

Five minutes left, of this moribund relationship.

She's so sick of it, already. Drawing it out is just drawing out the pain. It's better to amputate this human string connecting them, burn the wound clean, than to let it fester and drag her down.

(-)

Izaya's heart kick-starts.

He jolts awake from half-unconsciousness on Shinra's couch, and checks the clock. Seventeen minutes left. Her train leaves at sunset. Izaya pulls himself up, the half-healed bullet wounds aching, tearing away at his body as he tears himself from comfort. This thing between them, he reflects, was always so painful.

But he can't let things end like this. There has to be some kind of last insult, some last message he can pass on. After all, Kikou lost, didn't she? In the end, he's the one staying.

But how?

Izaya licks his lips and they still taste like that last kiss from days ago, the smoke.

Always the smoke.

Then he's heading out and heading up, the elevator moving smoothly up to her floor. She'll be at the train station, now. Waiting for him? Izaya laughs bitterly. Not likely. She's already made up her mind. But he'll make her remember, and taste the bitterness of his heart. A fitting end to all of it. And he's so ready for it to be over. The death of the sun, the birth of darkness, and it'll all start over tomorrow, but Izaya wants this to be done now.

Thirteen lucky steps and he's opening her door with the stolen key, and then he's inside her dark, abandoned apartment.

There are matches in his pocket and gasoline sloshing in a bottle at his side, and five minutes left, holding his hand.

Slowly, almost reverently, Izaya pours the gasoline in concentric circles on the floor like a priest or a witch-doctor, spirals and patterns gleaming in the gold sunset coming in through the window, around and around. The sharp smell of it laps at his nose, almost friendly. His vision comes in stripes through the heavy, black bars of threatening unconsciousness.

(-)

One minute.

This close, all Kikou can feel is some kind of numbness. Though her heart pounds like a prisoner against the bars of her skin, her mind is detached, floating somewhere in the never-ending dark. She can't think about anything. The past few months beat at her mind, trying to get in, but are deflected off and away.

(-)

This far into the plan, he dances a familiar tango with danger. Izaya smashes the glass of her wall with his fist, creating an exit for the smoke. The blood runs down his skin, but all he can feel is some kind of numbness. He leans slightly out of the jagged corners and lets the wind run its hands through his hair, lets his breath catch at the sight of land twenty miles down, the sky bearing down from above.

A match lies in his hands, because Izaya always did love the heavy weight of arson in his pocket.

(-)

Zero.

The train whistles in right on time, thundering towards the platform. For a moment it almost looks like it's not going to stop. Kikou watches the platform empty, watches the dancers perform their farewell steps, until there is nothing left but silence.

And her.

Is she really surprised?

One golden tear struggles free from her eye, and the salt mixes with the wound on the palette of her cheek, forming paint the color of pain. _Ridiculous_, Kikou thinks, and dashes it away. It lands on the dirty floor like an abandoned crystal—the only jewel she's ever thrown away.

She steps into the train, and the door hisses closed behind her. The city looks beautiful clothed in the brilliant bronze shafts and spears of sunset light, but her mind is numb, numb and cold as the train rumbles slowly forwards. Her eyes slide closed.

It is over, she thinks.

But then.

The other passengers are murmuring. _What is that? What is that outside? Is it smoke?_ Human curiosity grabs her hand, turns her weary head forcefully. Exhausted and ready to sleep, Kikou presses her nose to the window.

What she sees is this.

Her apartment building stands tall like a black-suited, mournful giant among its kin. It holds in its hand a bright, round crayon of orange flame the color of the sun's daily funeral. A scrawl of smoke written by its enormous hand ascends slowly from the twenty-second floor, climbing invisible stairs into the sky. A tiny, glowing half-circle of police cars is gathered around the base of the building, their white and red and blue lights punctuating the growing dark like jeweled fireflies. A crowd has gathered, too, and the lights glance off their clothes and their faces and their raised cellphones as they form a wider, hazy halo around the twinkling police.

And for a moment, a small, black-clothed figure appears in the telescope-scope of her eagle-sharp vision. He is, as always, a knife-slash against the stumbling throat of the world, graceful and dangerous, a panther in her bedroom. A God and yet a child, writing his story on the earth in crayon.

It seems to her that he raises his arm, for just a moment.

The train is moving too fast, and no matter how she looks back at this moment, she can't be sure. In a moment, the whole scene is whirling past, and she's left craning her neck backwards in frustrated futility. The stupid, fat sun blinds her.

But Kikou always prefers to think that it isn't a coincidence.

Of her last moments in Ikebukuro, she remembers the sun setting in a blaze of fire, and the destruction of a stopping point. The air was written with the transient ink of their ever-nebulous relationship, a connection that defied definition but was, after all, essentially made of dark scarring. Their eyes were on fire, and their souls were black charcoal. She would like to think that he smiled, that sarcastic, mysterious, lovely smile of his, even as the wounds tore his body and the fire counted down the time. She'd like imagine him stepping gracefully into the elevator again, letting it bear him down to healing, down to earth after the airy highs of _them_.

However, the facts are these. Kikou takes the train away, and it suddenly seems to her that it is the earth that is moving rather than the train. Continents shift under the tiger eye of the rising moon, earth running at a million light-years a minute, and the world falls apart in the dark as he is carried away for the last time.

But.

In her memory lives the giant, and the writing in the sky, and as the sun died the night was born again.


End file.
